Back in August 2018 when the Taiwanese Representative Office in Tokyo announced that EasyCard and iPass would accept credit card recharge starting in October, I suspected backend support was being put in place for Apple Pay support. I was half right, the addition of credit card recharge was a sign that the cards were getting ready for digital wallets but not Apple Pay. Yahoo Taiwan reported that Samsung is negotiating with the EasyCard Corporation to bring the MIFARE based EasyCard to Samsung Pay in 2019 via a software update. That finally happened April 11.
EasyCard is a stored value (SV) transit card similar to Suica used for both transit (MRT, Metro, buses, ferries, etc.) and e-money purchases. It will be the 2nd Samsung Pay ‘exclusive’ after Hong Kong’s Smart Octopus launch in December 2017 which is FeliCa based like Apple Pay Suica but still exclusive to Samsung Pay.
Apple Pay does support MIFARE cards in iOS 12/watchOS 5 which is the technology behind the recently added contactless student ID cards. Technically there is nothing standing in the way of getting EasyCard and iPass on Apple Pay. The sooner all SV transit cards are natively hosted and widely available on digital wallet platforms (Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, etc.) the better, it only becomes truly useful when everything is well integrated.
4-11-2019 UPDATE
EasyCard on Samsung Pay formal launch announcement on April 11
3-15-2020 UPDATE
That was a very long wait…EasyCard has finally launched on Samsung Pay.
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